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分享13-Jul-2018
by Rob Howard
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 Excerpts from the East Bay Express report: At Smythe's Accordion Center, the Squeezebox Business Booms. Smythe's Accordion Center has weathered recession, online competition, and now it's the only public accordion center in the Bay Area.Smythe's Accordion Center is a small Oakland storefront on Broadway with a buzzer-entrance and an animatronic clown in the window, its shelves stuffed with largely refurbished piano accordion, chromatic-style accordions and artifacts. Kimric Smythe, a congenital tinkerer, opened the shop in 1997 on the earlier site of Meni-Ketti House of Music, which accordionist Orlando Meni-Ketti founded in the 1930s. Since then, Smythe's has become a resource as well as a repository for regional accordion lore. Smythe pulled from the shelves one unique instrument after another. Smythe employs four teacher-repairers, offers lessons for piano/chromatic style accordions, and stocks accordions ranging from $260 to more than $6,000. With manufacturing irregularities and vast differences between variants such as concertinas and melodeons, maintenance requires creativity and expertise. Smythe said "I'd say the reason people still play accordion around here is because there's somewhere to come get them fixed." |